Sep. 26, 2014

Water on Earth Is a Million Years Older Than the Sun

Reporting in Science, researchers write that about half the water on Earth likely formed a million years before the Sun's birth. Study author Ted Bergin, an astronomer at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, says the cloud of gas and dust that eventually condensed to form the Sun contained "thousands of oceans of water," which it dispersed throughout the solar system. Comets and icy rocks later delivered some of it to Earth.